The University of Manitoba will holding two interesting “Energy Talk” seminars in their Faculty of Environment seminar series this November:
1. Speaker: Tim Weis, Director, Renewable Energy and Efficiency Policy, Pembina Institute
Title: Intersecting Policy, Politics and Technology: The Future of Renewable
Energy in Canada
Date: Friday, November 9th, 2:30 –3:30 p.m
Location: Wallace Building room 218.
How we produce and consume energy is intimately related to our physical health and wellbeing in addition to the massive risks posed by rapid global warming. Endowed with huge renewable resources, Canada has the potential to become a leader in the rapidly growing clean energy market. Whether Canada leads or lags will have as much to do with politics as it will with technology and how/if various levels of government can work together across Canada.
2. Speaker: Andrew Nikiforuk is the winner of the prestigious Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for his Tar Sands book. Journalist and writer of a new book called the Energy of Slaves.
Title: The environmental impact of Tar Sands and slavery to cheap oil
Date: Thursday November 15th, 2:30 – 3:30 pm
Location: Wallace Building room 218.
Are the Alberta Tar Sands and oil use making Canadian slaves to cheap oil? In Tar Sands, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands and argues forcefully for change. The Tar Sands supplies gasoline for 50 percent of Canadian vehicles and 16 percent of U.S. Demand. The Tar Sands also drains the Athabasca, the river that feeds Canada’s largest watershed, contributes to deforestation and climate change. Today we enjoy extravagant lifestyles due to the availability of cheap oil. Like slaveholders, we feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. Can we emancipate ourselves from cheap oil?
